How To Use Task Management Software To Increase Employee Productivity

Jayson DeMers
, ContributorI demystify SEO and online marketing for business owners.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

task management

If you use the Internet in your daily business practices and haven't yet adopted task and project management tools into your workflow, or if you’re a business owner and haven’t set up your employees on a task management system, it’s time to seriously consider it.

In a study conducted by researchers from the University of Hamburg, it was confirmed that the focus afforded to our flighty minds drops from minutes to seconds when confronted with the Internet. According to statistics verified by The Associated Press, our ability to pay attention while online in 2012 dropped to 8 seconds. That's one second short of the average goldfish. And, it’s your employees.

Social networks, Internet content providers and the brands they inform have grown to demand interaction from the recipient of content and not simply present us with information. And it works. Our minds (and our employees’ minds), while we may try to fight it, are being trained to wander through irrelevant stimuli at an increasing rate of attention shift.

With a workload that accumulates like compound interest, the common question of what needs to be done today and what needs to be done right now have become more important.

Fortunately, we’ve reached a point where the very medium that is fraying our attention has become intuitive enough for companies, teams and individuals to streamline the decision-making process of what needs our attention and when, reduce the number of thought processes that take us out of the moment, and allow us to plan our time with others more wisely.

Task management software has been a godsend for my business and my employees’ productivity. Let’s take a look at what options exist in the marketplace.

Hitting the G key followed by K from your Gmail inbox opens the Google Tasks app.

This feature is subtle, but considering that it's free, works on almost any web-enabled device and serves as a way to update Google Calendar without actually having to use Google Calendar. You can make multiple task lists and pair tasks with emails to quickly retrieve context-specific correspondence. And, once again, if you have a Gmail account you already have Google Tasks. It’s a good place to start.

Wunderlist

Wunderlist is a cross-platform to-do list app with some advanced features and collaborative functionality. Like Google Tasks, you can create time-sensitive tasks and sort them into lists. Like some of the more robust apps avaiable, there’s a right-hand column with which to create sub-tasks, add notes or files, and delegate tasks to other members of your team.

The app has a soft shadow aesthetic and background color customization. The ability to collaborate, however, comes at a cost. While Wunderlist is a good choice for an individual looking to stay organized, it lacks sync functionality to a calendar of your choice and has no calendar of its own.

SmartTM

Winner of the Evernote Devcup 2013 award for Best Business Integration, SmartTM is front-end software that syncs with the popular online cloud storage medium Evernote to provide a task-based productivity solution based on David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology.

From within SmartTM's 'Inbox,' you can create tasks and organize them by assigning context- sensitive notes, priority and attitude -- as in, how you feel. While the focus of this app is clearly on the individual rather than a team, the inclusion of a comprehensive productivity ethos and a 'Smart Review' feature that tracks your performance offers an experience that’s quite unique.

While it lacks an Android version, and regrettably an online version as well, SmartTM has a contemporary look with native iPhone and iPad apps. It also utilizes a fairly sleek weekly/monthly calendar. To date, there is no Android version.

Toodledo

Toodledo is a fairly well-executed combination of Wunderlist and Google Tasks riding on a straight-forward interface. And, to some extent, it's free to use.

Toodledo has more than enough in terms of neat organizational tricks, including the ability to automatically slot a priority-sensitive task into a free block of time. It includes options to select and print notes. The left-hand column contains well-organized navigational links and a nice calendar app. One drawback, however, is that the freemium version forgets your tasks within one week.

The app is available on iPhone and iPad, though many Android plugins seem to exist for syncing between Toodledo and other android-native task apps. The timed deletion of task information may be a deterrent for some who are looking for a rich, free task management experience, though it's hard to find a cheaper pro subscription than 14.99 a year.

Flow

Lastly, there‘s Flow. Flow has been casually described as “Mac-like” for its ease of use, robust feature set, and minimalist interface. There's an app for the iPhone and iPad and a web-app that functions well even in the browser on a 7 inch tablet.

Flow is well suited for teams of 2 or 3, but scales to accommodate much larger, multi-departmental organizations as well.

Most of Flow’s functionality is hidden behind a discreet veil, but before you begin it takes you on a tutorial that demonstrates its simplicity. The leftmost column allows for fast movement from tasks to filtered content or the built-in calendar and you can make, add and export almost anything from almost any screen.

Conclusion

Task management software offers relief for the over-taxed mind the way a bicycle grants ease of movement to the rider. Furthermore, it keeps a startup team focused on the most critical tasks, allows tasks to not fall through the cracks, and allows communication threads regarding individual tasks to happen in convenient task “silos” rather than cluttering up employee email inboxes.

What’s more, these tools are now ubiquitous for those who work online.

And these are only a handful of examples. What are the tools you keep in your arsenal to plan your work and collaborate with others?